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This is Hacker Public Radio episode 3,763 for Wednesday, the 4th of January 2023.

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Today's show is entitled, The Bottle Mind Hall Phenomenon.

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It is hosted by Mike Ray and is about 13 minutes long.

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It carries an explicit flag.

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The summary is, a looking to this psychological Phenomenon.

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Hello and welcome to Hacker Public Radio.

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HCR is a crowd-sourced podcast, in which people like you and me and everybody else who can,

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and that's everybody, provides or sends in podcasts, little recordings, long recordings,

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about any second of interest to the Hacker community.

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My name is Mike Ray and it's a very long time since I did an HPR podcast.

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Most of my podcasts in the past have been about technical subjects.

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This is about the psychological Phenomenon.

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Now I should point out that it is gone, which well passed 10 o'clock on Christmas Eve.

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I'm several bottles of hoaxback, traditional English ale and about a third of a bowl of 20-year-old

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port to the better, so I might be slightly incoherent anyway.

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The Bottle Mind Hall Phenomenon.

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Now this is something which I can guarantee that if you are of any age, you will hear

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my description of it and you will go, oh yeah, that's happened to me.

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And I should explain the name, the Bottle Mind Hall Phenomenon.

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Now the name Bottle Mind Hall to older listeners like me will be reminiscent of the late 60s,

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early 70s or the whole of the 70s, really, and the early 80s.

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They were a group who liked to call themselves the Red Army faction.

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They were labeled at the Bottle Mind Hall Phenomenon, or the Bottle Mind Hall Group by journalists.

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They were responsible in the 60s and 70s and into the 80s for a number of what might

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be described as terrorist atrocities, assassinations, attempted bombings, successful bombings

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of places in and around Western and Eastern Germany, particularly East Germany, but of course

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one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter and we're not going to get involved

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in that discussion here.

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Now this Phenomenon is known as the Bottle Mind Hall Phenomenon because it was in 1994, a man

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wrote to a newspaper and mentioned that he had heard mention of the Bottle Mind Hall

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Group or scene mention of it, which ever and thereafter seemed to be hearing about it multiple

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times and hence it was given the label the Bottle Mind Hall Phenomenon.

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Later that in 2005 it was Chris and the Frequency Illusion.

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So to describe what the Bottle Mind Hall's illusion or Phenomenon is in simple terms.

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About 18 months ago I was talking to a friend of mine called Emma and we were discussing

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talking about some of what I consider to be my legacy skills and one legacy skill in particular

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which is Cobalt.

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I was originally trained in 1991 for about 12 months at college, at the Royal National College

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for the blind and visually impaired as a Cobalt programmer and I mentioned Cobalt to Emma

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and she'd never heard of it.

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The next time I spoke to her a bit a month after that she said that you know we spoke

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about Cobalt she's like I heard it several times after that I was standing on a railway

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station in particular so she told me and there were a couple of guys behind me on the platform

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and I heard them talking about Cobalt and then on the radio a couple of weeks later I

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heard it mentioned again and Emma is I think in her late 30s I was already 40s possibly

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and until I mentioned Cobalt to her she had never heard of it and then seemed to be hearing

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it all over the place so that is the Phenomenon and that is why it's called the Frequency

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Illusion it's something which you hear or see usually on there I might be the name

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of a city the name of river a country a rock group a song programming language as in

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my course or something else and then you take note of it having never heard of it before

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and then after that you seem to be hearing about it all the time or coming across it quite

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frequently a very strange phenomenon now I have experienced several times in my life

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and the only one I can think of at the moment is the word interlocutor now interlocutor

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means if you're having a conversation with somebody the person you're having a conversation

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with is your interlocutor I first came across the word when I read some HD wells

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at the age of about 25 possibly so over 25 yeah well over 25 years ago but thereafter

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I was going to be hearing the word interlocutor a lot and I think it's mentioned in

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the Sherlock Holmes canon but yeah I must have heard or seen the word interlocutor before

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that I just didn't make note of it but because when I was reading the HD wells and saw

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the word I didn't know what it meant so I made a note of it and went and looked for it

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for the definition and then seemed to be coming across it thereafter quite frequently

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so I've explained the phenomenon now let's talk about what psychologists think of this

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and why it occurs so I could just say that the responsibility of it falls with two cognitive

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biases the first of these two cognitive biases is selective attention bias and that is the

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effective noticing things which are important to us so when you think that you've heard

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before and are familiar with you will hear again and the most noticeable of course

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of these selective attention bias is the thing that we all know and we all experience

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and that is hearing our name spoken from the other side of a crowded room where there is a lot

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of chatter you will hear your name over and above the chatter which you are disregarding

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which as background noise so that's selective attention bias paying attention to things

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which are important to us the second of these cognitive biases is confirmation bias

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not by us by us confirmation bias and that is paying attention to things which reinforce

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our predisposition our current belief and disregarding anything that contradicts it so that's

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the second of the cognitive biases which give rise to the bottom line of phenomenon it's

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thought to be almost entirely harmless although it does impact people with the worst kind

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of content court it's called at the moment schizophrenia people with the worst kind

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of schizophrenia can suffer from poor effects created or brought on by the bottom line

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of phenomenon so there you go a phenomenon which I am absolutely confident if you are

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of any age unless you are very young a child or young adult you will have experience

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just phenomenon and you will have made a mental note of it probably very casually but

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you have you have probably like me in the early days not really understood why something

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that you had not heard before or never heard of before is suddenly heard all the time

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now this is a function of how your brain actually works a lot of people regard human

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brain as being like a disc drive which you absolutely is not it's almost like velcro it

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consists of hooks and loops and things become connected synapses little chunks of memory

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are connected by association patterns where absolutely as humans designed to recognize patterns

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and these associations build up in the brain so Emma my friend again on the telephone

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conversation with me would have heard me talking about cobalt so when she then heard it

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on a railway station was subject to that synaptic connection in her brain between me

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a close friend and cobalt being fired and she immediately paid attention to the fact

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that they were two guys standing on the railway platform somewhere close to where she was

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standing talking about cobalt whereas in her 30 odd years 40 odd years she must have heard

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the name cobalt before but I had no synaptic or no brain patterns in her brain which caused

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that connection to your that connection to be fired so that's the way the brain works

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so there we go bottom line of phenomenon a very interesting psychological effect or phenomenon

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which I am again absolutely confidently you are familiar with anyway this has been

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like right on my cobalt radio talking about the boulder minehoff phenomenon

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